A.D.C. I-II
Those were truly the days, and a book of the Club's history should be written perhaps it will be. The passing of the old Theatre Royal presents a great handicap, but the continuity of our amateur performances practically unbroken since the forties - must somehow be preserved.
Theatres
ANECDOTES OF THE A.D.C.
Mr. C. Champkin's Reminiscences of Hongkong's Old-time Personalities
"Old Theatre Memories of Hongkong" was the title given by Mr. Cyril Champkin, Hon. Secretary of the Hongkong Amateur Dramatic Club, to a broadcast talk delivered over Z.B.W. on Tuesday night.
In the course of an interesting discourse on the history of the Club from its earliest days, Mr. Champkin dealt humorously with anecdotes of the times, and with the gradual disappearance of "that unnatural belief held in mid-Victorian times" that the stage and its followers were outside society and most certainly were not the place or the calling for a woman.
In the course of his talk Mr. Champkin said:
In our community of constant change the oldest inhabitant generally gets decently interred before he becomes embarrassingly reminiscent. It is, of course, quite convenient and highly desirable that he should, for most of us very properly have a deeper regard for the defunct than for the living. Much of the dullness of life is accounted for by the indefinite survival of our friends and we all enjoy a melancholy satisfaction in reflecting upon what our magniloquently mournful ancestors termed "the memory of departed worth"; but if we stir these dry bones of memory, it is surprising how little we find that has the convincing charm of reminiscence or of personal association. It is a fascinating perplexity that the minor historical records of this Colony suffer as much from the unaccountable dumbness of those that made its history as from the inexhaustible loquacity of those that didn't.
When, therefore, we seek to revive old theatre memories in Hongkong we have necessarily to be haphazard and eclectic. We must rely principally upon shreds from old newspapers, odds and ends from the pages of the past, fragments of drama, snatches of the epic and patches of farce; yet all these have the interest and deserve the respect that is due to antiquity.
In the opening scene of "She Stoops to Conquer" Squire Hardcastle says "I love everything that's old - old friends, old manners, old times, old books, old wine." He might well, I think, have added "old actors and old stage-plays." Certainly for those who have felt the lure of the stage there is gladness in the remembrance of long-gone players. Old plays, too, like old wine, gain softness and mellowness with age.
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